Rebel General Denies Role In Ecuador Kidnap

January 20, 1987|The New York Times

QUITO, Ecuador -- A rebellious air force general, freed from custody in exchange for the release by kidnappers of Ecuador`s president, was in hiding Monday but denied that he directed the hostage-taking and said he hoped to campaign for the presidency next year.

Lt. Gen. Frank Vargas Pazzos dropped from sight over the weekend after President Leon Febres Cordero was seized by commandos at an air base on Friday and held hostage for 12 hours.

On Monday, Vargas, speaking to reporters in the living room of one of several houses in which he said he has been hiding in the port city of Guayaquil, said he had gone underground because ``the guarantees were not clear`` that he and the insurgents would receive an amnesty promised by the president.

Febres Cordero made the promise while he was a captive. While being held, he has since said, he was beaten and threatened with execution.

Meanwhile, a special session of the opposition-controlled Congress has been called for today to review the president`s conduct in office, and members of the leftist and center-left parties said they would seek impeachment unless the conservative president resigned, alleging he consistently violated the constitution.

In Guayaquil, reporters were brought to Vargas`s hiding place at night by a driver who sped through the dark streets in a circuitous route designed to frustrate any pursuit.

In the interview, Vargas said he thought Febres Cordero, who has called the general a traitor and ridiculed his manhood in his home province, should resign ``so the country can live in peace.``

Was he prepared to lead a coup?

``Never,`` Vargas retorted. ``I am a civilized man.``

In a televised address to the nation Monday, Febres Cordero referred to the armed forces as being in ``monolithic unity`` and said they had demonstrated ``serene valor`` in deciding to maintain ``judicial and democratic order`` in the aftermath of the episode.

The flamboyant president, who was wearing a .45-caliber pistol when he was taken hostage, said deciding to negotiate a settlement had been much more difficult than deciding to order an attack against the rebels would have been.

``But,`` he said, ``it was a decision demanded by my duties, demanded without doubt by the supreme interests of the republic.``

Vargas said he planned to stay in hiding until the president officially declared that there would be no reprisals, and until judges formally dismissed the charges of insubordination for which he had originally been placed under a form of detention, in officers` quarters on military bases, that was much like house arrest.

Late on Monday afternoon, military court officials said that the insubordination charge had been dropped, but that a previously unpublicized charge of bribery had been left standing. The bribery charge was initiated, court officials said, by a former minister of defense and a former chief of the army whom Vargas had accused of taking kickbacks in the government purchase of a jet passenger plane.

Vargas said he had been offered asylum in Venezuela, but planned to stay in Ecuador and run for president.

``I think I have the capacity to do it,`` he said.

Febres Cordero, in his televised speech, did not mention Vargas or the agreement that he signed in captivity to give amnesty to the general and the air commandos. He did, however, say that he was a ``man of honor`` and that he kept his word.

The insurrection, at an air force base near Guayaquil, has propelled this nation into its worst political crisis since democracy was restored in 1979 after seven years of military dictatorship.

Opposition politicians called on Monday for a special session of the National Assembly on Tuesday ``to question the conduct`` of Febres Cordero.

The opposition has charged that the hostage-taking, in which two presidential bodyguards were killed and seven other people were wounded, would never have taken place if Febres Cordero had not refused to accept a pardon that the Congress voted for Vargas in late December.